There have been plenty of people, err… pumping up the mobile porn market, not the least of which the mobile porn sellers themselves, billing the content as the ever-elusive “killer app” for mobile. The numbers have been a little suspect all along, whether it’s saying half of Korea has accessed mobile porn, or the supposed billions mobile porn will pull in. But a piece in the Guardian does some calculations, and comes to the conclusion that maybe things aren’t as big as they’re made out to be (no pun intended).
If you buy in to the analyst prediction that mobile porn will be worth $2.3 billion in 2010, there’s a few takeaways: first, that’s not tremendous growth in dollar terms from the $1 billion market they say mobile porn will be this year. Second, there should be well over 3 billion mobile users by 2010, compared with 1 billion today — so porn spending per subscriber won’t even hold steady. Finally, that $2.3 billion would represent just 5% of the overall mobile content market, hardly making it a killer app.
There will always be porn consumers. But it’s hard to believe there are that many dedicated enough to want porn on their mobile phones, as opposed to the TV or internet. As Mike points out at Techdirt, porn helped cable and satellite TV, VCRs, DVD players and the net thrive, mainly because each successive technology offered an improvement in the viewing experience. The only benefit mobile porn offers (alongside a few drawback) is portability, but how many people want to watch porn when they’re on the go, out in public?
But the most interesting comments come from one Julia Dimambro, the MD of mobile porn purveyor Cherry Media, who alleges operators are playing down porn because they don’t want to be seen as promoting it. While carriers do have a love-hate affair with porn, their restraint appears to have more to do with reality about the level of demand setting in than any puritanical leadings, and Ms. Dimambro’s numbers about the popularity of her company’s site seem to prove this.
She said back in February it was getting 1 million hits per month. Now, the Guardian says it gets 300,000 hits a month. The fact that hits are a useless metric aside, the figures raise two possibilities. Either the company’s playing fast and loose with its numbers to try and make the market look bigger than it really is, or it’s seen a dramatic drop over the last six months. Whichever is true, neither one reflects too well on the company or the mobile porn industry.
in. Summer months are ‘always’ typically slower for the adult content and services market. Everyone is out flying kites in the sunshine. Additionally the new raft of more restrictive regulations (on subscription services, and age verification) certainly in the UK, have dramatically reduced the mobile adult market size. Typically in the UK, print press is more successful than online. out.
Seasonality would knock their traffic down by 70%? I find that hard to believe. After all, isn’t the point of mobile porn that you can view it while you’re out flying a kite in the sunshine, or wherever?
In terms of Julia’s comments and her figures, i’d suggest that realistically some drop in traffic could be attributed to seasonality, but generally i’d hazard that’s she’s simply guilty of being a bit poetic with her figures - hardly unique.
As far as I can imagine people are unlikely to simply be browsing onto her site, and are probably going to have have sent in an MO to a shortcode before receiving a Wap Push back.. At which stage the user still has to have been sat in front of a form of advertising - print/web/TV. Seasonality definitely effects these markets, hence a likely reduction (although more like 25-30% than 70%, the margin between the two perhaps being ‘mark up’ she used for PR purposes..)
Carlo is absolutely right about the numbers discrepancy. This is due to a misquote in the original article, due to the interview with Richard Wray from The Guardian being done over the phone. It should have referred to page visits instead of hits. You can confirm this directly with Richard. As the blogging community rightly pointed out at the time of the original figures, hits no longer have much measure in today’s world.
It‚Äôs interesting that the success or failure of adult entertainment on mobiles is often perceived from the writer’s personal views on the subject. A press release from Reuters in April this year stated pretty much the same thing. Adult on mobiles was more hype than fact and it wasn’t going to be one of the main revenue drivers. Then in the next sentence, it said that simple ‘pornographic’ (see the generalisation here!?) images and videos earned over 400,000 million dollars in 2004. Based on the mass-market popular handsets, the technical restrictions and the poor level of content itself that was available last year, I think that’s a pretty impressive indication of the demand for a single product type!
The objective now is delivering not only to that demand, but the consumer expectation of what it SHOULD be! The point that many are missing is that adult entertainment on mobiles should be DIFFERENT than in other media such as the Internet, DVD’s etc. Users interact with their mobiles in a totally different way than they do online and erotic consumers on mobiles have different requirements than gamers for example. (I could go on at length about the psychology of mobile erotica - It’s a lot more involved than topless wallpapers.)
I am also in agreement that statistical analysis is just that - analysis. It can ONLY be speculation, because we haven’t done it before. One thing I DO know is that since the beginning of 2005 demand for erotic products and content has gone crazy here at Cherry Media. Our distribution channels (i.e. where we license our mobile erotic products such as wallpapers, screensavers, video clips etc. to aggregators and operators) has increased over 85% in the last 6 months. This is via at least 20 global territories and includes many operator portals. Believe me it’s really starting to heat up! So whatever your personal opinion is about adult entertainment, it WILL be ‘one of’ the major revenue drivers on mobile. We are living it every day. We do no cold selling, very little marketing (and none, direct to consumer) and we have several enquiries every day wanting to distribute our content.
The adult mobile industry has been a little slow to take off, because of platform and network issues in ensuring that only adults could access it. This is now happening with the UK really leading the market.
Also, please keep in mind the following: Roughly 80% of the content we are distributing via distribution partners (based on their requests) is bikini or topless ‚Äì in line with the lad’s mags available today. In our own direct to consumer channel (i.e. not reliant on operator on-portal requirements), where we have both glamour and adult, it’s almost the reverse - around 80% of our actual sales come from +18 content. What does that tell you? I would say it shows a discrepancy in what adult consumers actually want and what networks are willing to offer. This is why the operators will tell you it‚Äôs not the big seller on their portal. Probably not, why pay to download a image of a girl in a bikini when you can view it for free all over the TV, online and in the consumer media? If Adult mobile is NOT a killer app, it will be because users can’t find what they really want, specifically for mobile - and this is a HUGE range of soft, hard, funny, interactive, sexy, and seductive content and services. Not just hardcore porn galleries!